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The Universe in Zero Words: The Story of Mathematics as Told Through Equations

Publisher:

Princeton University Press

Number of Pages:

223

Price:

27.95

ISBN:

9780691152820

The Universe in Zero Words is the latest book by Dana MacKenzie, who you may know as a regular contributor to the AMS series What’s Happening in the Mathematical Sciences. The book is aimed at the interested layman, and proceeds by discussing the history and use of twenty-four equations. The topics range from the ancient (Pythagorean Theorem, 1 + 1 = 2, etc.) through the modern (Black-Scholes, the Lorenz equations, the Chern-Gauss-Bonnet equation).

The chapters are fairly short, typically about five or six pages, and there are interesting illustrations throughout. It is an attractive book.

However, I found it hard to read. It wasn’t the prose, which was excellent, but rather the depth of the content. I kept expecting more depth, more detail and more rigor. Clearly, this is due to my profession. Given that I am not the target audience, I tried an experiment. I gave the book to a seventeen year old university student majoring in biology and asked her to read the chapter on the Lorenz equations, which I enjoyed. Her response was lukewarm when asked if she wanted to read other chapters, or if it made her want to know more about chaos. She did say, however, that she found the chapter easy to understand.